Will accountants be relevant in the next 10 years?

Matt Martin, Manager

I’m pretty sure that my senior partner at the time preferred using a quill to emails. However the industrial revolution has finally caught up with service providers.

How tech has impacted how we work:
In truth, the advent of computers along with the internet, and their slow uptake into the office
over the 90’s and 00’s arguably removed the need for those whose sole purpose was to
perform the everyday admin tasks required by every company, as by and large these new
machines meant that accountants could process their own day to day admin themselves
(albeit begrudgingly), at least to a point where it was difficult to justify employing as many, or
any “admin staff” to do it for them.

Lower level technical:
Fast forward from the 00’s to the last ten or so years, we have seen the emergence of
artificial intelligence. Some of which hasn’t been all that intelligent, and once you really look
under the hood it is often a simple computer programme being referred to as AI in marketing
material. But none the less this new wave of technology has been helpful to the services
sector, not least accountants who have found it useful for taking care of the “lower level”
technical work, an assistant if you will, that in some cases has removed the need for more
junior staff that would traditionally perform that lower level technical work as they begin their
journey in accountancy. As I did.

Higher level technical:
Fast forward to the present day and that artificial intelligence is genuinely becoming more
intelligent. AI doesn’t just take care of admin tasks and low level technical anymore, helping
us to offer our service more efficiently, but it can arguably perform the higher level technical
advisory work, ultimately threatening to replace us entirely.

Or can it?

I’ve seen people (let’s call them “tech bros” for the fun of it) ask an AI chatbot for a technical
answer, whether it be for legal or tax advice, and then ask their human advisor the same
question, as a test so see whether their human advisor will give the same answer as the AI
chatbot. If the human advisor does indeed give the same answer then these “tech bros” see
no reason to keep the expensive human advisor when they can get the same advice for free
from one of the various AI chatbot options online.

This methodology may sound ridiculous to you, or potentially like simple common sense, but
whatever it is we as a profession must take it seriously. At the other end of the AI spectrum there are websites out there posing as AI but all they’ve actually done is outsource to a country with a lower cost workforce, that is still very much human. Although the methodology between the pretend AI and actual AI may be different, the end result is the same. Seemingly high quality technical advice at a fraction of the cost.

What could possibly go wrong?! What danger could there possibly be..

It’s about trust
Everyone who provides a service is affected by this, and ultimately there is nothing anyone
in the services sector can do to stop it. Though there is a strong argument that all of this
needs to be regulated, the ability to ask an AI chatbot for technical advice is here to stay,
and could even be referred to as “progress”, potentially.

Is it scary for accountants and other advisors? Yes. Is this a risk to our business model, or
indeed our very existence? Very much so. So what do we do?

I like to take the emotion out of it by putting myself in the customer’s shoes and ask myself,
would I trust an AI based website to advise on or even actually perform the exchange and
completion on my house sale/purchase? Ie replace a conveyancing solicitor.

The honest answer? It depends. Instinctively the answer is “no” as buying a house is such a
big life event that I am willing to pay for a “proper” (human) service. But then again I can see
a world where flock mentality takes hold; if everyone used an automated, low cost service for
buying a house in place of an expensive solicitor, then I likely would too. Especially if I was
trying to save money, or preferred to spend it elsewhere.

So what’s the answer?
As accountants we have to evolve the services we offer and how we perform them.
In the end I suspect newer businesses with a lower budget will begin their business journey
by using a “digital AI accountant” due to the low cost, even if it isn’t the perfect answer; but
once more established they will be willing to pay more for a human accountant. It will be
seen as an upgrade for those with the money to do so. So accountants must position
themselves as an upgrade to any AI offering. Afterall, there’s nothing like dealing with
another human, provided the service levels are high.

However we must bear in mind that Tech Gurus have a track record of overestimating how
much the current day tech will change our lives in the next ten years, but conversely they
also tend to entirely miss the latest innovation that will come out of nowhere and will entirely
change how the world looks in ten years.

So although we must act, we mustn’t over react. There is no replacement for good quality
customer service. History has taught us that customers will always be willing to pay for it.
But what about the workforce delivering this customer service? Increasingly the next
generation entering the workforce want more senior roles sooner, not content to perform the
services equivalent of “manual labour” as I did at the age of eighteen. Perhaps AI assistants
will enable us to flip the workforce structure from horizontal layers, with increasingly complex
layers as you go up the ladder over time, to a more vertical system where youngsters are
given more responsibility sooner, with the help of ai assistants that enable them to perform
more technical work at an age that I would find baffling.

In my opinion we have an obsession with thinking that we are the first generation to
experience something, whether it’s the internet or artificial intelligence that can think for
itself; but the principles of progress and obsolescence are as old as time, and those coming
into the workforce with bright ideas will before long be looking over their shoulder at all this
newfangled technology thinking they are the first to face such challenges. Hopefully by then
I’ll be on a beach sipping a cocktail, but I’ve got a good 30 years before I’ll get there!
We cannot rest on our laurels, I am determined to embrace tech and evolve as much as is
necessary, but I must also accept that in ten years I could be a dinosaur that offers a good
service to customers in what will be considered an old fashioned style in the hope that is
enough to maintain a viable business until it’s time for me to sail off into the sunset.

Perhaps now I understand a little better that senior partner who refused to use email in
favour of hand written letters all those years ago when I began my accountancy career.